Conventional cache units employed in networks such as, by way of example and not by way of limitation, web proxy caches and browser caches may be designed to reduce the amount of time required to fetch a web page or other query result. Cache units may also be employed to reduce the volume of data being transferred across a network. Cache units do not usually permit caching of “post-query” web forms because in a post-query form the fields and values comprising the query parameters may be encoded in the body of the query request rather than being listed on the command line of the Universal Resource Locator (URL) associated with the query. A form that uses a post-query does not present a unique URL based on the values that a user types into the form before pressing a submit button.
In contrast, another form for submitting query in a network may use a “get-query” form. A get-query provides a unique URL string that is determined by the values that a user may enter into a form before pressing the submit button. The URL may remain constant because the form values and parameters are not appended onto the URL string. Conventional web proxy and browser caches may associate unique URLs with content. Such an association of query content with a URL cannot work in the case of content returned from post-queries because with post-queries the same URL can return different content.
Web applications experiencing high traffic volume, including the Internet, private or public Local Area Networks (LANs) or other networks may use post-query web forms that are not conventionally cacheable and cannot be converted to standard get-query web forms. One reason that post-query forms may not be converted to a get-query form may be restraints imposed on URL length in HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) format. HTTP format is a common format employed in network communications today, especially with Internet applications. Because of limitations imposed on length of URL, each post-query request to a system may require the full network bandwidth available to transfer the post-query request from the web browser to the web server and from the web server to databases more remotely located in a network. For similar reasons, a post-query may also employ significant portions of the processing activity of databases and any associated web servers. Further, a significant amount of bandwidth (i.e., capacity) available to a network may be occupied in returning a dynamically assembled web page back to a web browser in response to a query.
Therefore, there remains a need in the art to efficiently provide post-query responses while reducing web server and database processing activity.